Technical Field
The present invention relates to a microphone and a microphone apparatus.
Related Art
There is a microphone having a plurality of unidirectional microphone units incorporated in one housing to collect conversation by a plurality of speakers in a conference or the like. For example, a microphone having three unidirectional microphone units provided such that directional axes are radially positioned at intervals of 120 degrees, thereby to enable sound collection in all 360-degree directions is known.
However, such a conventional microphone cannot easily change directions of the directional axes, when the directions of the directional axes need to be changed, for example, in a case where three speakers sit in front of and on the right side and left side of the microphone in a conference or the like, and the installation position of the microphone cannot be changed.
To be specific, in the above-described example, by changing the directions of the microphone units in the housing such that the directional axes mutually make an angle of 90 degrees, more favorable sound collection can be realized. The conventional microphone has a configuration to change the directional axes by physically changing the directions of the microphone units in the housing (JP 2011-29766 A), and thus has a complicated configuration. Further, in such a conventional microphone, a user needs to change the directions of the microphone units in the housing. Further, such a conventional configuration has a problem that change of the direction of the directional axis of the microphone is difficult, when the microphone is installed in a place from which the microphone cannot be easily taken out, for example, when the microphone is hung from a ceiling or embedded in a desk.
JP 2008-61186 A and JP 2008-67178 A describe apparatuses using one omnidirectional microphone unit and two or three bi-directional microphones. However, the apparatuses described in these documents have a configuration in which the directional axes among the bi-directional microphones are perpendicular to one another.